By Bob Currie, Vessel Examiner
U. S. Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Whenever you climb into your car, you usually don’t give much thought to rain, wind, and fire. After all, it’s an enclosed vehicle (unless you have the top off or down), most cars can handle moderate wind, and cars usually don’t develop fires in normal use. Before you push away

By Bob Currie, Vessel Examiner
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
We recently had a boat end up on the rocks at the Galveston North Jetty. Fishermen like to get as close as possible to the rocks in order to get the fish that hide there. Sometimes they get too close. Even though the operator in this event had placed his anchor, he failed to ensure

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Whenever I perform a Vessel Safety Check on a recreational boat, after I complete the inspection for the required items I then get into the Coast Guard recommendations, including the one on fuel management. Good fuel management allows you to go farther on a tank of gas while

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
If you watch any of the game warden reality shows, you know when the game wardens stop a boat on the water they always ask to see a life jacket for everyone on board, they make sure kids under 13 are wearing their life jacket, they ask to see the throw cushion and the

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
What is a Kicker?
If I tell you to simply look at the picture below and see if you can figure out what a kicker is, I think you could do it. Everyone knows someone who has what is called a twin engine boat. A twin engine boat has two

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
The Texas coastline is 367 miles long. Many people think that the coastline is one long beach, but in reality it is broken up by many bays, channels, and rivers, some of which are navigable and some are not. As for the navigable channels, some are natural and some are

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla.
“The Fog” is a 1980 American supernatural horror film directed by John Carpenter. It tells the story of a strange, glowing fog that sweeps over a small coastal town in Northern California, bringing with it the vengeful ghosts of leprous mariners who were

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
There has been a rash of kayaking deaths in the past couple of weeks. As I write this, there is a search underway for the body of a missing kayaker off Galveston Island. His overturned kayak, along with his life jacket, were found just a couple of hours ago. All of the kayak deaths

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
When we talk about Recreational Boating Safety, some people may think that the target audience is only boat owners. Well, boat owners are in the target audience, but there is another target audience: the recreational boating passenger. You do not have to be

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Character is defined as a trait, quality or high moral code. Good character can be developed. Apt is defined as quick, prompt, ready, and being able to respond without delay. In order to be a good boater, you must develop good boating character, which I call aptability. Aptability is

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
What would you think if, while driving down the highway, you were pulled over by the Texas Highway Patrol, and instead of asking you for your license and registration the trooper instead asked for permission to climb into your vehicle? That would really be something, but that is

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
This column’s title is a play on the occupation of Hank Hill, the title character in the cartoon series for adults, King of the Hill. Th setting is in the fictional town of Arlen, Texas, and revolves around Hank, his wife Peggy, his son Bobby, his neighbors, and a few others. Hank works as a

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Base Galveston Flotilla
Survival is the “preservation of one’s own life under conditions of immediate peril.” To preserve one’s own life at sea requires the ability to live through extreme conditions of emotional and physical shock, and hardship for an indefinite period of time. When faced with an open water

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
New boaters, unless they have taken a state boater safety course, may not fully realize the dangers of shallow water and obstructions found when boating near shore or in bays and bayous. The most common occurrence in such locals is unintentional grounding. When

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
“The Twelve Gifts of Christmas” is a song parody written and sung by Allan Sherman in 1963. It is based on the classic Christmas song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” and I always substituted Sherman’s gifts when singing the original classic, but under my

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Time of the Season
For many recreational boaters, the first cool spell signals the end of their boating season. Many boaters pull their boat out of the water, park it in the back yard, and cover it with a tarp and let it sit until the next spring. But

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Base Galveston Flotilla
Educators have long known that one of the best ways to teach is through music. We all can remember childhood songs long after we have grown up, and we often link those songs to certain memories. When I think about the wind, the song “They Call the Wind Mariah” always comes

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
The topic today isn’t “what’s happening in the Gulf of Mexico.” Rather it is about the relative movement of water in a pattern we call a current. There is another type of current that is important in navigation: air currents, otherwise known as winds.

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
I was in line for the Port Bolivar to Galveston ferry early one morning to go to work on base. The deck hands unloaded the incoming ferry, and I put my truck in gear in anticipation of moving forward to load the ferry. But we were not directed to load. After a few long minutes

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Duck soup is slang for an easily accomplished task or assignment. The term is over 100 years old, but it is still applicable today. For this column it has a double meaning, as this column is aimed towards duck hunters in particular. The assigned task is to come back home

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Risk Analysis
One way in which people gauge the risk of what they are doing is to weigh the probability of an event happening against the severity of injury or death should the event occur and use that analysis to decide whether

By Bob Currie, Vessel Examiner
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 081-06-08
The US Coast Guard relies heavily on private boaters to assist other boaters in distress. Often the nearest boat to a vessel in distress is a private boat. When time is of the essence, it is often the private vessel operator that comes to the aid of a fellow boater, and these

By Bob Currie, Vessel Examiner
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 081-06-08
I am on the water quite a bit. My home is at the beach, and I can see ships in the Gulf of Mexico as well as barge tows and recreational boaters in the Intracoastal Waterway and Galveston East Bay. I see more than most people the different forces that act on a vessel’s

By Bob Currie, Vessel Examiner
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 081-06-08
Here is a scenario that happens all too often all over the US: You are the skipper of a nice recreational boat. You decide to take some friends out for a boat ride. Everything is going well when all of a sudden you hit a wave at a bad angle, and you are thrown overboard. If you are doing

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
When a vessel makes violent contact with an object in the water, and that contact causes damage to the vessel or the object that was struck, then the first question to be answered is whether the vessel and the struck object were both moving or whether one was stationary. If both

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Every year there are many deaths and injuries that occur due to accidents that occur on boats with unlicensed and untrained crew. Another major cause of boating accidents is overloading, and unlicensed commercial charters are just as likely as recreational boaters to

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
At the end of the first Star Trek movie, Captain Kirk said, “Mr. Sulu, ahead, warp one.” Sulu said, “Warp one, sir.” Chief DiFalco asked, “Heading, sir?” Kirk answered, “Out there. Thataway.” This may be why they seemed to get into trouble every week. They didn’t have a safe and